[TOOL RELEASE] ps2ls (Planetside Tools)

Gelnika · 2012-11-27, 03:38 AM

Hello,

My name is Colin Basett and I have created a simple-to-use GUI tool to browse and extract Planetside 2's asset files that I have called ps2ls (get it?

)

Usage

Click File.
Click Import Files....
In the open file dialog, navigate to the Planetside 2 asset directory (the program will attempt to automatically detect the asset directory.)
Select as many *.pack files as you wish and click Open.

From here you can search individual pack files for files names, extract selected files or extract all loaded pack files to a directory of your choice.

It is a very simple tool at the moment, but I plan to expand its functionality to include viewing and extracting terrain, models, particle effects and more in the future.

I'm looking for other enthusiastic and experienced programmers to help with this project as well. Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if this is something you would like to work on!

Enjoy!

Source Code
http://code.google.com/p/ps2ls/

Download
http://code.google.com/p/ps2ls/downloads/list

Jaybonaut · 2012-11-27, 03:40 AM

Anyone know if this is against the EULA?

Tooterfish · 2012-11-27, 04:07 AM

Wait, so this program allows us to extract pack files and view their contents? Why would anyone want to do this?

Roidster · 2012-11-27, 04:13 AM

just beware you could get banned from 3rd party apps,they are banning flawless widescreen users right now,buddy of mine was banned tonight for it

Gelnika · 2012-11-27, 05:39 AM

Originally Posted by Jaybonaut

Anyone know if this is against the EULA?

It is not against the EULA.

Originally Posted by Tooterfish

Wait, so this program allows us to extract pack files and view their contents? Why would anyone want to do this?

A great number of reasons. Just one example is this Planetside 2 map using the Google Maps API. This was constructed using the images the game uses to render the map, which were extracted from the .pack files. There are many file formats that have not yet been deciphered including the model and map formats. The sky is the limit, really.

Originally Posted by Roidster

just beware you could get banned from 3rd party apps,they are banning flawless widescreen users right now,buddy of mine was banned tonight for it

This is not a third-party app, and you will not get banned for using this tool. It's simply a file extractor that operates outside of the game and can in no way interact with the game at all.

Tooterfish · 2012-11-27, 07:46 AM

Sounds pretty useful when you put it like that. Can you repackage the pack files with modified textures? That is my only concern, with the cheating the way it is in games like this one.

elementHTTP · 2012-11-27, 08:31 AM

Lets start modding

Gelnika · 2012-11-27, 03:44 PM

Originally Posted by Tooterfish

Sounds pretty useful when you put it like that. Can you repackage the pack files with modified textures? That is my only concern, with the cheating the way it is in games like this one.

There are CRC-32 consistency checks that are performed on individual files, though they are easily identified and modified on a local level. I'm positive that they had the foresight to create overarching consistency checks for groups of files.

It's likely that the game wouldn't allow you to log in if it detected your files were out of of sync with the server. If you somehow managed to get past the log-in phase there's probably periodic consistency checks that would kick or ban you if they deviated from the server.

I don't have any plans to allow you to repackage or modify the pack files as I don't want to be the one to blame when people get the ban hammer. :P

Mod · 2012-11-27, 08:39 AM

As long as your exporting out of the PS2 files and not trying to import into them I don't see any problems as you are not affecting the game in any way.

Probably a lot of cool tools, artwork etc... could come out of it.

Snipefrag · 2012-11-27, 09:09 AM

Nice, i attempted to do this manually myself a couple of weeks ago when the servers were down to pull out some sound effects for one of my videos, didnt quite manage it. Very useful, cheers.

Hamma · 2012-11-27, 10:03 AM

Yea you aren't going to get banned for this unless you start modifying your game files. This is a pure extractor. RoyAwesome from Reddit created one in beta as well.

It's also where we got most of the armor/weapon icons on the wiki. HOWEVER, the API will contain all of the weapon icons as well.

Jakobud · 2012-11-27, 01:01 PM

http://ps2maps.com uses a similar tool for map tile extraction.

Ghryphen · 2012-11-27, 04:03 PM

Nice Gelnika, you might collaborate with Roy Awesome. I have been using his to extract data for the wiki.

https://github.com/RoyAwesome/Planetside2Tools

DirtyBird · 2012-11-27, 04:09 PM

good work Gelnika, thanks.

Gelnika · 2012-11-28, 04:43 PM

I have a goody to share. Humble beginnings, but I've managed to get a good start last night on deciphering the model formats. I selected a random model and started poking around into it. I've found vertex data, index data and texture coordinate data for individual meshes. I read this data in a Python script and exported it to a PLY file just to see if I was on the right track, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I've run into a slight snag at the moment, but here is what I managed to get out of the file last night.

It's the trunk of a tree from Esamir. It's missing its leaves because there are two separate 'meshes' and I was only reading in one of them for this particular test.

As soon as I can accurately read in at least one type of the mesh files (there's about 4 similar model file types) , I will add a model viewer into ps2ls.